Archive for September, 2010

GOP Hopefuls in California on Different Paths: New York Times, Friday, September 24, 2010, by Jesse McKinley

Meg Whitman and Carly Forina, both former chief executives with personal fortunes of millions of dollars, are Republican candidates for governor and U.S. senator respectively. “They’re trying to ride the same wave, but they’re riding it a little bit different, ” said Jack Citrin, a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley. “It’s like Fiorina is on a surfboard, and Whitman is on her yacht.”

The wave is the Republican Party’s momentum in the upcoming November election.

Of course, the surfing term, riding a wave, is not usually associated with yachts, but with surfboards.

“Democrats Put Off Showdown on Bush Cuts Until After November Election”

WASHINGTON-“Democrats abandoned plans to vote before Election Day on extending Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class while eliminating them for better-off Americans,…”

One cannot say that the Democrats “dropped the ball”. They are waiting before making a decision. Technically, when a team punts the ball in American football it kicks it to the opposing team, in this case the Republicans. (more…)

This from “THE GIST”, US AIRWAYS Magazine. Brian McCallen, a former senior editor for GOLF Magazine writes an article about two different types of practice golf balls for trips, “the Floppy” and ” Night Flyer CL.” “The floppy is built to last through thousands of hits.” “The Night Flyer, a lighted ball “sets a new standard for after-dark play.”

This was the title( You Can’t Hit a Target You Never Set) of an item to be discussed in the Karrass seminar. One needs to set a goal/target to reach it.

Archery is a sport in which competitors shoot arrows with a bow at a target (target archery) or shoot animals for game. (hunting) or for fish (fishing). A target is something one shoots or aims at to score/to win, if possible.

DERIVATION: This expression derives from an old English sport; bullbaiting dogs try to pull a bull by his nose to the ground. Gamblers placed a bet “on the bull’s eye” if he wished to make a bet. Crowns, an English coin, were used to bet so frequently “on the bull’s eye that the coin itself came to be called a bull’s-eye. Later, the term was applied to the black center of a target. The idiom right on the money is also derived from the ancient interchangeable use of a coin, bull’s-eye and the center of a target. A sentence in this case would be: ” You were right on the money with your speech.”

Investment bankers are delighted. This (fiscal) quarter will probably see more mergers and acquisitions (M&A) than any since the crash. Is a new merger wave widely predicted in the past year, finally breaking?

Surfers wait for a wave. Investment bankers wait for deals, a wave of mergers between businesses on the horizon.